re
married. He had no money in his pocket, and nothing to depend upon but
his hands, which doubtless seemed to him quite a valuable possession,
as he knew they had brought in an income of several hundred dollars a
year to their former owner.
Douglass's new friends advised him to go to New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where whaling fleets were fitted out, and where he
might hope to find work at his trade of ship-calker. It was believed,
too, that he would be safer there, as the anti-slavery sentiment was
considered too strong to permit a fugitive slave's being returned to
the South.
When Douglass, accompanied by his wife, arrived in New Bedford, a
Mr. Nathan Johnson, a colored man to whom he had been recommended,
received him kindly, gave him shelter and sympathy, and lent him a
small sum of money to redeem his meagre baggage, which had been held
by the stage-driver as security for an unpaid balance of the fare to
New Bedford. In his autobiography Douglass commends Mr. Johnson for
his "noble-hearted hospitality and manly character."
In New York Douglass had changed his name in order the better to hide
his identity from any possible pursuer. Douglass's name was another
tie that bound him to his race. He has been called "Douglass" by the
writer because that was the name he took for himself, as he did his
education and his freedom; and as "Douglass" he made himself famous.
As a slave, he was legally entitled to but one name,--Frederick. From
his grandfather, Isaac Bailey, a freeman, he had derived the surname
Bailey. His mother, with unconscious sarcasm, had called the little
slave boy Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. The bearer of this
imposing string of appellations had, with a finer sense of fitness,
cut it down to Frederick Bailey. In New York he had called himself
Frederick Johnson; but, finding when he reached New Bedford that a
considerable portion of the colored population of the city already
rejoiced in this familiar designation, he fell in with the suggestion
of his host, who had been reading Scott's _Lady of the Lake_,
and traced an analogy between the runaway slave and the fugitive
chieftain, that the new freeman should call himself Douglass,
after the noble Scot of that name [Douglas]. The choice proved not
inappropriate, for this modern Douglass fought as valiantly in his own
cause and with his own weapons as ever any Douglass [Douglas] fought
with flashing steel in border foray.
Here, then, in a New
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